PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference - C./133

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH...NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

78

Numbers in questions. Even in a population like that of London, it would be rashness to determine that a certain number of casualties, for example, of a given kind occur peculiar to "the pursuits" and habits of the people, because a fixed relative number of them to the population were computed. In an faithful statistical record of such events having now been taken for a series of years, it can be predicted, as an undeniable peculiarity of that population, that it is liable to a certain number of defined casualties. An isolated statistical fact is like a stone beacon ready for the builder - it has no obviously defined purpose until it occupies its place in the superstructure it is destined for. Accumulated and well collated statistics faithfully reveal the social, the political and sanitary condition of a people. No statistical records are absolutely correct in numbers, yet they are always the nearest possible approximation to truth; he who has reflected on the subject can have no conception of their vast utility, or the wide range of their influence. They warn us from concealed dangers, and suggest remedies for evils that have worked their ills in secret. They uproot erroneous conceptions of the mind, that guide us to destruction, and walk us to wreck; they enable us to walk through life in the broad daylight of truth. The Registrar General, instructed by the information in his office, has been able to point an unerring hand to the sources of the late pestilence in England, by which Britain has lost more lives than we have lost in battle since the days of Marlborough, and he is as certain of the power of eradicating and preventing this scourge, by purifying the sewers and cesspools, as that the disease hydrophobia has, by police...